Guy R. Grant

Since fireman unemployment is extremely low, why would a trained firemen not be able to find work? Amika Sergejev, who worked for two and a half years as a firefighter and lead engineer shared her story of employment denials based on her prison experience. Current rules prohibit her from being hired at any firehouse because her work at a firehouse was the last part of her prison sentence (Sergejev, 201...

by Guy R. Grant

Whenever we see young unkempt men standing by the roadside holding a sign asking a dollar, a meal or a work; we might wonder what happened in their lives that they should be in such a dire need. Most people think of these men as panhandlers or freeloaders who do not want a steady job or any institutional boundaries that would provide income for them to pay their fair share of fostering a productive society. Few people, if any, ever st...

by Lucia Lacey Nevitt

The discussion takes a brief look at female population within the U.S. prison system. Women now represent one of the fastest rising segments within the American prison system. Since 1977-2009, the number of women within the prison system are staggering nearly 200,000 women are behind bars (Beck, Kerberg & Harrison, 2002; Paltrow, 2013). The departments of corrections are slow in response to the growing numbe...

The mere existence of substantive measures of administering faith based methods of rehabilitation to prisoners promotes the belief that prisoners may become more social being if they attend religious services. Currently the primary form of rehabilitation in prison is through faith based ministries (Gerace and Day, 2010). Faith based progr...

Do not be conquered by evil but conquer evil with good (Romans 12:21)

The thematic take-away from the recent visit of Pope Francis to USA and Cuba is that we should diligently exercise God’s greatest commandment, Love. We do this by being the bearers of good spirit in good works. This is a tall order given the worldly news which vividly remind us of the worse of this immoral world and leaves many of us fearful of everything and everyone. Yet, w...

Over 2.3 million people are incarcerated, 7 million are on probation or parole, and almost every family in America has been touched in some way by mass incarceration. Just as anger over mass incarceration has spread, turmoil over the police arrests which lead to fatalities have perm...

One year ago, I began to write about the barriers of reentry. I was unable to discern whether my blog was read by anyone, yet I was compelled to continue writing. Since then, I have had some verbal encouragement and feedback from my readers even though none have written in the comment section. Furthermore, I have learned to analyze the blog outreach. Analytics has shown that Community Lifestyle Institute’s blog has had over 2400 readers since its first blog i...

Collateral Damage: Guilty by association

Kennedy and Chance (2011) define, “collateral damage is a phrase used to refer to the civilian casualties that inadvertently result from military operations, (p.1)”. The term is also used to refer to the inadvertent damage as a result of mass incarceration which is a result of the war on crime legislation. In military situations causalities to civilians, particularly, women and children are protested by the public. Unfo...

Gust (2009) purports that, “the government has a duty not to harm innocent people,including children of incarcerated parents.”  If so, does not this duty apply to parents who are victimized for the crimes of their child?  Parents of incarcerated children suffer financial burdens, emotional stress, and ostracism by the policies in place in the penal system (Simmons,2012).  Due to the